Wentworth Bowling Club’s youngest member, 10-year-old Max Pronk baking a Victoria Sponge from the lockdown cookbook. To date Max’s successful culinary achievements have been a chocolate cake, a lemon drizzle cake, a Victoria sponge cake, roast pork with
crackling, roast chicken, fish bake and battered fish pieces. His favourite is applying the method for making gravy from the trivet of vegetables the roasts cook on.

Wentworth Bowling Club, a relatively small, in terms of members bowling club based on the Bluff in Durban, celebrated 80 years of providing a sporting outlet to the community last year.Like most bowling clubs, Wentworth is reliant on income from the bowlers using the greens for practice and competitions (green fees) and custom from the members bar in the club house.

As predicted, the economic effects of the cancellation of district and club competitions on 16 March was potentially ruinous for bowling clubs as they restricted their operating times to those declared by government. The announcement of a national lockdown, which began at midnight on Thursday, 26 March, resulted in clubs closing their doors at 6pm for the duration of the 21-day lockdown.

Wentworth Bowling Club does not boast a big balance sheet that would sustain them through a period of low cash flow, or no cash flow at all. A group of members, through a WhatsApp group named themselves the ‘Lockdown Crazies’ and maintained contact by participating in daily challenges and sharing their day to day activities. This included photographs of the meals and snacks they had prepared each day.

From this, the club president, Cheryl Waterman, saw the potential to raise funds through the sales of a cookbook comprising tried and tested recipes submitted by the members.Thereafter began a flurry of emails and WhatsApp messages as members submitted their recipes to their president, who typed relentlessly for 10 days. The culmination was a lockdown cookbook – 90 pages long filled with family favourites and, in some cases, previously well-guarded secrets. The cookbook is currently being sold online as an eBook in PDF format.

With the predicted late opening of clubs and sporting venues, the need to generate funds has become more urgent and the members of Wentworth Bowling Club are hopeful that the funds raised through this project will at least see them through the lockdown.

With the extension of the lockdown which will probably stretch into the winter months, they added a new section of slow cooker winter warmers. This will allow you to get your meal on the go while you binge watch your favourite series, help the kids with their schoolwork, create with your craft project, bake up a storm, landscape your garden or just sit quietly and read.The lockdown cookbook is filled with tried and tested recipes comprising the following categories:• Soups and starters.• Meals with fish.• Chicken – the most versatile.• Meat on the menu.• Vegetarian meals.• Sauces.• Braais, potjies and salads.• Cakes and other bakes.• Delicious desserts.• Slow cooker comfort food.

This project is an effort by Wentworth BC to raise funds to maintain their bowling greens during the lockdown period. The book is an eBook (PDF format) and is selling for R60. R10 from each book sale goes to ward 66 vulnerable groups feeding scheme.

Make an EFT payment to Standard Bank current account 051769948, Bluff branch code 043326 and e-mail proof of payment to [email protected] Direct any enquiries you have to the same e-mail address.